Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; A study from University of Bonn attempted to determine whether climate deniers are bending the facts to suit their narrative, or are simply misinformed.
01. February 2024
Why Are People Climate Change Deniers?
University of Bonn and IZA study reveals unexpected results
…
A surprisingly large number of people still downplay the impact of climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity. …
Motivated reasoning helps us to justify our behavior. For instance, someone who flies off on holiday several times a year can give themselves the excuse that the plane would still be taking off without them, or that just one flight will not make any difference, …
…
At the center of the experiments was a donation worth $20. Participants were allocated at random to one of two groups. The members of the first group were able to split the $20 between two organizations, both of which were committed to combating climate change. By contrast, those in the second group could decide to keep the $20 for themselves instead of giving it away and would then actually receive the money at the end. “Anyone keeping hold of the donation needs to justify it to themselves,” says Zimmermann, who is also a member of the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence, the Collaborative Research Center Transregio 224 and the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Individuals & Societies” at the University of Bonn. “One way to do that is to deny the existence of climate change.”
As it happened, nearly half of those in the second group decided to hold on to the money. The researchers now wanted to know whether these individuals would justify their decision retrospectively by repudiating climate change. The two groups had been put together at random. Without “motivated reasoning,” therefore, they should essentially share a similar attitude to human-made global heating. If those who kept the money for themselves justified their actions through self-deception, however, then their group should exhibit greater doubt over climate change. “Yet we didn’t see any sign of that effect,” Zimmermann reveals.
…
Zimmermann advises to be cautious, however: “Our data does reveal some indications of a variant of motivated reasoning, specifically that denying the existence of human-made global heating forms part of the political identity of certain groups of people.” …
Read more: https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/025-2024
I can’t help wondering if the study authors may be inferring meaning where no meaning exists, because of a cultural misunderstanding.
“… Anyone keeping the donation needs to justify it to themselves …” – but is that really true, outside of Germany?
Personally I would not experience an overwhelming need to justify my actions. I would pocket the $20, because someone just offered me $20 no strings attached and told me I could keep it. I mean, why should I hand a free $20 back to a bunch of researchers?
Maybe this is just me. What would you have done in this situation?
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These guys are really desperate. I would keep the twenty dollars and when asked why I say I am willing to give it back when you can prove Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming using proper science and not relying on computer models or anecdotal evidence. I’ll wait.
The term “climate denier” is a disgusting insult that is utterly inappropriate.
Those who use it, simply demonstrate their complete ignorance of the philosophy and cognition that underpins the empirical sceptic. The term is arrogant, insensitive, & displays a sense of entitlement, but mostly it is just lazy and sloppy. Much like climate “science” itself.
Or, just maybe, the entire group can easily see what the researchers are unable to fathom: that a climate change charity is a worthless scam.
It’d be more interesting to test the gullibility or intelligence of the subjects who freely gave the money away.
Motivated reasoning.
Hmmm.
I think there was more than a little bit of motivated reasoning influencing the researchers design of experiment.
Plus others in the CAGW industry, most likely.
“Why did the Greenpeace USA Executive Director cross the Road?”
“Passacantando’s Millions”
If the researchers here are implying CAGW skeptics ‘reasoning’ is motivated by cash, that’s pure psychological projection about the actual side of the issue that’s getting filthy rich.
What a debacle.
This sort of ‘trial’ calls into question whether psychology is in fact really a branch of science.
Certainly seems a bit tickbox
This study calls into question all funded academic research.
Including itself.
The published research is a study designed by German scholars on US subjects with the goal of demonstrating that climate skeptics are selfish people.
Motivated reasoning is a selfish trait to alter a reasoning process because it is beneficial to do so for the person doing the reasoning.
They chose US subjects because about half of the population in the US is skeptical of climate change. If the study supported the premise it would conclude also that the US population is more selfish than most Europeans.
They only succeded in making fools of themselves and wasting money and time. People are not skeptical of the climate crisis narrative because it suits them to be so, but because they perceive they are being deceived. If the US people have a different trait from most Europeans it is that of being less naive and trustful of their government and politicians.
I’d be extremely suspicious if somebody gave me £20 (I’m in the UK) as to what the ulterior motive was. After that I’d keep it.
If they said I HAD to split it between two organizations, both of which were committed to combating climate change. There’d be a short two word expletive and they’d be told what to do with it.
I would love to see the study that proves that had humans (including our ancestry) not been on the planet the temperatures would have been markedly different from what have been.
There’s a court case running at the moment which shows the lengths, and depths, some people go to to ruin the lives of others. Just like the whole alarmist shambles It isn’t a pretty watch nor a cheap one.
Perhaps I can have my money back from the beginning of this charade and let the guilty pay me from their pockets – they deserve to be destitute, ignored and excluded from democracy just so they know what it feels like.
They’ll get more than a funny look if they come this way.
There is a German term for this: ‘Totaler Quatsch’.
Surely you need to be indoctrinated into believing that giving it to researchers was badly needed. I’m sure that people would still pocket it if the charity was the Salvation Army, because they doubted the money would go to the needy. Is that self deception because you want the money? Most of us have been indoctrinated to believe it will do good, and I have no evidence to the contrary about the Salvos, but if you need the money, reliable transport, reliable electricity, meaty stuff that tastes like meat etc. then you are allowed to doubt.
Personally, the assertions and political demands were far too absurd to just accept. It was akin to demanding a left testicle to stop 90% of the world from starving.Maybe that was a better experiment.
Global warming isn’t human induced so the premise is fatally flawed, and giving money to the misinformed to continue their charade is just further supporting stupidity.
I certainly wouldn’t want to donate the $20 to climate change activist type groups.
It is amusing that the researchers don’t even consider that most of the public can obviously see that the “cure” is worse than the “disease”. They clearly do not know anything about how decisions are made in the real world.
You all need to go to a Green conference and wait until lunch, instead of queuing they will form a scrum and its the toughest at the head of the scrum that get fed first, They are not the fluffy nice people they make themselves out to be.
The “…” above includes the first paragraph of the actual article on the “uni-bonn.de” webpage :
Or, as the abstract of the original paper (direct link) put it :
As usual, the “media spin” about the “research” (***cough***) is rather different than the details of the actual “study”.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
“My” psychiatrist has diagnosed “me” as being either
1) a sociopath,
2) a narcissist, or
3) both.
“I” do not “need to” do any such thing on pocketing your “freebie” $20.
The only thing “I” would need to “justify to myself” would be handing it back instead.
One way to detect a “good” scientific experiment is to check that the “null hypothesis” they are checking against is clearly identified, and another is that they list all of the “confounding parameters” and “alternative conjectures” that they have thought of before, during and after the (social) experiment actually being performed.
What are the other (psychological) “ways” for the participants to “do that” specific justification ?
A much more interesting study was about (climate) activism:
Dark personality traits linked to engagement in environmental activism
The study
The dark side of environmental activism
Abstract
In times of growing concerns about climate change, environmental activism is increasing. Whereas several studies have examined associations between environmental activism and the Big Five personality characteristics, the potential “dark side” of environmental activists’ personality has been neglected. Accordingly, this study examined associations between environmental activism, the dark triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism) and left-wing authoritarianism (i.e., antihierarchical aggression, anticonventionalism, top-down censorship). Data came from 839 employed individuals in Germany. Results showed positive associations between environmental activism and Machiavellianism, narcissism, antihierarchical aggression, and anticonventionalism. Most of these associations remained significant after controlling for Big Five characteristics, demographic characteristics, political orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism. These findings suggest that environmental activism, in addition to its potential positive outcomes, may also have a dark side in terms of activists’ personality.
And the article:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hannes-Zacher/publication/376033415_The_Dark_Side_of_Environmental_Activism/links/6568cc74b86a1d521b1cdd6c/The-Dark-Side-of-Environmental-Activism.pdf
Not that I give much credence to social studies, but this one is at least entertaining [full of epithets] in its dissection of environmental activists.
There’s certainly one conclusion one can draw from this “study” – the University of Bonn is not an institution that will “educate” anyone on the subject of “climate.”
They need to check their premises – there is no empirical evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels have ever driven the Earth’s temperature, regardless of “source.”
Claims about the amount by which atmospheric CO2 have risen since “pre-industrial” times are based on the scientific incompetence of comparing dodgy “proxy” records to modern instrument measurements as if they are equivalent, which they most certainly are not.
And a warmer climate is BETTER, not worse. Looking fondly back to The Little Ice Age like it was a more desirable “climate” is like blacks looking fondly back to the time of slavery.
Even the Intergovernmental Propaganda on Climate Control cannot find any evidence that any kind of “bad weather” you can dream up is becoming more frequent or more severe.
So, WHAT “CRISIS?!” And what, precisely, is supposedly being “denied?!”
Was that USD20..? Cos that’s oveR $30 AUD. Well worth taking.
Here’s a good take on this joke of a “study”:
https://joannenova.com.au/
linked from Electroverse.
The more I think about it, the less sense this study makes. What was the control supposed to represent?
“Here’s $20, you must give to A or B.” WUWT? What ‘real-world situation’ is that supposed to simulate?
Their test group sounds a little too idealized?
Perhaps they are a small group of students?
If they offered $20 to lower economic economic civilians, I doubt the civilians would even thin about the choice.
$20 for some NSF funded wealthier research or an inexpensive lunch and dinner today?
Easy choice!
Especially after watching the Mann vs Steyn/Simberg trial.
$20 to that sleazy slimy Mann?
Hades no!
I’d probably buy about 6.5 gallons of fossil fuel with it.
It’d only stretch to about 3 gallons around here ☹
How many doomsters are out there?
Please choose from the following-
The founding presumption of the investigation is that anyone who understands deeply how weak and contradictory the “evidence” is that AG CO2 causes global temperatures to rise is a “climate denier”. Were the definitions flipped so that the true believers in AGW were the ones denying scads of evidence that there is nothin unusual going on with temperatures, the same experiment could be run with the same result.
I guffawed when they said at the beginning that “deniers” are “misinformed” as they began their investigation. Misinformed about what?
This “research” is not even interesting. Its premises are so far from reality that it looks like a discussion of the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” The “investigation” is how recently you stopped beating your wife, and what the motivation was to convince you to stop all that beating. The fact that you never beat your wife doesn’t cross their preoccupied little minds.
How did Germany get developed??